Your Toast, I Return It To You
by Aea
Summary: Carmen feels like she's different than Black Sheep was and likes that she feels differently than Black Sheep did. (But they both protect the face.) [Based on the 2019 Netflix reboot]


That may be the quickest I've turned a story around, right here!

I've got big plans for a major series that will span Carmen's escape from the island through the first episode of the series. It's got history! It's got capers! It's got world financial models! Er- nevermind that. My other big work (if you are a fan of the movie She's the Man?) was really fun but really challening, so before I jumped into a major work again, I figured I should get in Carmen's head a little bit. There are a couple of bits in here that refer to the timeline I'm putting in place for that story because I was writing with that in mind, but rest-assured this is a standalone piece and exists it's own little universe. This takes place when Carmen and Graham are facing each other at the crosswalk at the end of Episode 6, and she leaves without approaching him.

* * *

The first time Carmen tried to thwart VILE, she failed spectacularly. She went to entirely the wrong place, fell two stories off a fire escape, dislocated her shoulder on the way down, and managed to only hobble three blocks in the worst pain she'd ever been in before Player had to call a taxi to take her to the hospital because she couldn't relax enough to drop it back into place herself.

As she walks away from the crosswalk, from Gray ( _it's not Gray, he's not Gray it's Graham now, he's not the same but he's standing right there you have to GO)_ , Carmen can only wish for that ache now. That's the kind that's fixable, where you've only injured a limb, instead of ripped one clean off.

She makes it four blocks this time, so that's growth, she guesses. At four blocks, she hits her knees, choking on great heaves. _(Next time, she promises herself, because of course there will be a next time, next time she'll make five blocks. Five blocks and a rooftop to boot)_.

There was a kindness in the ignorance that came with growing up on the Isle of Vile. She's tried to explain it before, to Player, to Zack and Ivy, even making a point to mention how much she _didn't_ hate it in her train-ride life story to Gray. She doesn't think she's ever really succeeded in making anyone believe her, but maybe that's another thing she's learned thanks to VILE: there's a limit to how much you can ever really understand another person, even if you believe in them.

For all the things she wanted to experience, that little Black Sheep dreamed of seeing, doing, eating, and knowing, she didn't often think about how it might make her feel. Or if she did, it was only to think about how wonderful it would be to accomplish her dreams beyond the tiny speck of land she called home. In her desire to go _anywhere-but-here_ , it was easy to forget that the anywhere-else could be much, much worse.

Carmen experienced most emotions in a vague way a child, yearning to be one of yearly graduates that took off from campus to have amazing worldwide adventures ( _jealousy_ ), or trying to inspire new recruits by welcoming them in their native languages ( _happiness_ ). Empathy was not high on anyone's curriculum list, and perhaps because of that, Carmen both closely guarded her own most vivid reactions and tried to ease them for others.

She remembers being thirteen and nauseated the first time she learned about Argentina's financial crash and ensuring riots around the time she was born. She wonders if her parents were part of the looters that tore through businesses, part of the police force that killed civilians, and if they were either, which she would feel better about. She wonders what her life would have been like if they'd kept her, and what in the world would have happened for someone to abandon a baby in such conditions. Black Sheep tears out of the room they use for these lessons, curls into a tight ball on her bed and doesn't move. She doesn't know how to explain what she's feeling ( _confused_ , the word should be _confused_ but it doesn't fit), so Coach Brunt thinks she has menstrual cramps and sends up ice cream to her room. There is a new nanny the next day, one who is clearly fearful of upsetting her. Black Sheep asks for a meeting with the faculty that afternoon to argue she's too old for a nanny, and the topic never comes up again.

But now that she's out in the real world, the changes that come with an increased knowledge of the how things work aren't just an expansion of mind- it's an expansion of heart. In the three years since she's met, lost, fought, and now left Gray, Carmen has not just felt different, she's felt _differently_.

Black Sheep could be _jealous_ or _happy_ or _confused_. She could _love_ family, _enjoy_ water balloons, and be a little _scared_ of having major life choices decided by majority vote. But on an isolated island where you only know five people for more than year, there never seemed to be much cause to feel more than that.

Carmen can be _happy_ when her microwave popcorn isn't burnt at the bottom, because she feels _elated_ when a homeless shelter gets $10 million to help more kids. She's _angry_ that a South Boston donut shop was a VILE front, but she is _incensed_ that they'd try to starve an entire county just to sell bad rice.

Carmen is stronger than Black Sheep; but she's also never felt more strongly- failure and trust and victory and despair. _Love_. She carries these in a way that was untenable just a few years ago. But it delights her too, this never ending spectrum of _ways_ to feel.

Or it did, until the great Carmen Sandiego is folded over on herself on busy streetcorner, head tilted up so she can determine through tear-blurred vision if the two approaching her are Good Samaritans, run-of-the-mill assholes, or VILE operatives.

 _Always protect the face._ She still hasn't learned how to protect the heart.

* * *

Sorry, Carmen! I didn't mean to leave her in such a place, but we know she's ok in ep 7, so...? Please let me know what you think!


End file.
